Various - "The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858"

T. W. Lumb - "Authors of Greece"

W. Stanley - "Instruction for Using a Slide Rule"

Various - "Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865




The surrounding country is full of lively reminiscences of those
terrible times. Panic-stricken populations flying at the approach of the
enemy; whole families fugitive from homes none thought of defending;
flocks and herds, horses, wagon-loads of promiscuously heaped household
stuffs and farm produce; men, women, children, riding, walking, running,
driving or leading their bewildered four-footed chattels,--all rushing
forward with clamor and alarm under clouds of dust, crowding every road
to the river, and thundering across the long bridges regardless of the
"five-dollars-fine" notice (though it is to be hoped that the
toll-takers did their duty):--such were the scenes which occurred to
render the Rebel invasion memorable. The thrifty German farmers of the
lower counties did not gain much credit either for courage or patriotism
at that time. It was a panic, however, to which almost any community
would have been liable. Stuart's famous raid of the previous year was
well remembered. If a small cavalry force had swept from their track
through a circuit of about sixty miles over two thousand horses, what
was to be expected from Lee's whole army? Resistance to the formidable
advance of one hundred thousand disciplined troops was of course out of
the question. The slowness, however, with which the people responded to
the State's almost frantic calls for volunteers was in singular contrast
with the alacrity each man showed to run off his horses and get his
goods out of Rebel reach.

From Harrisburg, I went, by the way of York and Hanover, to Gettysburg.
Having hastily secured a room at a hotel in the Square, (the citizens
call it the "Di'mond,") I inquired the way to the battle-ground.

"You are on it now," said the landlord, with proud satisfaction,--for
it is not every man that lives, much less keeps a tavern, on the field
of a world-famous fight. "I tell you the truth," said he; and, in proof
of his words, (as if the fact were too wonderful to be believed without
proof,) he showed me a Rebel shell imbedded in the brick wall of a house
close by. (N. B. The battle-field was put into the bill.)

Gettysburg is the capital of Adams County: a town of about three
thousand souls,--or fifteen hundred, according to John Burns, who
assured me that half the population were Copperheads, and that they had
no souls. It is pleasantly situated on the swells of a fine undulating
country, drained by the headwaters of the Monocacy. It has no special
natural advantages,--owing its existence, probably, to the mere fact
that several important roads found it convenient to meet at this point,
to which accident also is due its historical renown. The circumstance
which made it a burg made it likewise a battle-field.

About the town itself there is nothing very interesting. It consists
chiefly of two-story houses of wood and brick, in dull rows, with
thresholds but little elevated above the street. Rarely a front yard or
blooming garden-plot relieves the dreary monotony. Occasionally there is
a three-story house, comfortable, no doubt and sufficiently expensive,
about which the one thing remarkable is the total absence of taste in
its construction. In this respect Gettysburg is but a fair sample of a
large class of American towns, the builders of which seem never once to
have been conscious that there exists such a thing as beauty.

John Burns, known as "the hero of Gettysburg," was almost the first
person whose acquaintance I made. He was sitting under the thick shade
of an English elm in front of the tavern. The landlord introduced him as
"the old man who took his gun and went into the first day's fight." He
rose to his feet and received me with sturdy politeness,--his evident
delight in the celebrity he enjoys twinkling through the veil of a
naturally modest demeanor.

"John will go with you and show you the different parts of the
battle-ground," said the landlord. "Will you, John?"

"Oh, yes, I'll go," said John, quite readily; and we set out at once.

A mile south of the town is Cemetery Hill, the head and front of an
important ridge, running two miles farther south to Round Top,--the
ridge held by General Meade's army during the great battles. The Rebels
attacked on three sides,--on the west, on the north, and on the east;
breaking their forces in vain upon this tremendous wedge, of which
Cemetery Hill may be considered the point. A portion of Ewell's Corps
had passed through the town several days before, and neglected to secure
that very commanding position. Was it mere accident, or something more,
which thus gave the key to the country into our hands, and led the
invaders, alarmed by Meade's vigorous pursuit, to fall back and fight
the decisive battle here?

With the old "hero" at my side pointing out the various points of
interest, I ascended Cemetery Hill. The view from the top is beautiful
and striking. On the north and east is spread a finely variegated farm
country; on the west, with woods and valleys and sunny slopes between,
rise the summits of the Blue Ridge.

It was a soft and peaceful summer day. There was scarce a sound to break
the stillness, save the shrill note of the locust, and the perpetual
click-click of the stone-cutters, at work upon the granite headstones of
the soldiers' cemetery. There was nothing to indicate to a stranger that
so tranquil a spot had ever been a scene of strife. We were walking in
the time-hallowed place of the dead, by whose side the martyr-soldiers,
who fought so bravely and so well on those terrible first days of July,
slept as sweetly and securely as they.

"It don't look here as it did after the battle," said John Burns. "Sad
work was made with the tombstones. The ground was all covered with dead
horses, and broken wagons, and pieces of shells, and battered muskets,
and everything of that kind, not to speak of the heaps of dead." But
now the tombstones have been replaced, the neat iron fences have been
mostly repaired, and scarcely a vestige of the fight remains. Only the
burial-places of the slain are there. _Thirty-five hundred and sixty
slaughtered Union soldiers lie on the field of Gettysburg._ This number
does not include those whose bodies have been claimed by friends and
removed.

The new cemetery, devoted to the patriot slain, and dedicated with
fitting ceremonies on the 19th of November, 1863, adjoins the old one.
In the centre is the spot reserved for the monument, the corner-stone of
which was laid on the 4th of July, 1865. The cemetery is semicircular,
in the form of an amphitheatre, except that the slope is reversed, the
monument occupying the highest place. The granite headstones resemble
rows of semicircular seats. Side by side, with two feet of ground
allotted to each, and with their heads towards the monument, rest the
three thousand five hundred and sixty. The name of each, when it could
be ascertained, together with the number of the company and regiment in
which he served, is lettered on the granite at his head. But the
barbarous practice of stripping such of our dead as fell into their
hands, in which the Rebels indulged here as elsewhere, rendered it
impossible to identify large numbers. The headstones of these are
lettered, "Unknown." At the time when I visited the cemetery, the
sections containing most of the unknown had not yet received their
headstones, and their resting-places were indicated by a forest of
stakes. I have seen few sadder sights.

The spectacle of so large a field crowded with the graves of the slain
brings home to the heart an overpowering sense of the horror and
wickedness of war. Yet, as I have said, not all our dead are here. None
of the Rebel dead are here. Not one of those who fell on other fields,
or died in hospitals and prisons in those States where the war was
chiefly waged,--not one out of those innumerable martyred hosts lies on
this pleasant hill. The bodies of once living and brave men, slowly
mouldering to dust in this sanctified soil, form but a small, a single
sheaf from that great recent harvest reaped by Death with the sickle of
war.

Once living and brave! How full of life, how full of unflinching courage
and fiery zeal, they marched up hither to fight the great fight, and to
give their lives! And each man had his history; each soldier resting
here had his interests, his loves, his darling hopes, the same as you or
I. All were laid down with his life. It was no trifle to him, it was as
great a thing to him as it would be to you, thus to be cut off from all
things dear in this world, and to drop at once into a vague eternity.
Grown accustomed to the waste of life through years of war, we learn to
think too lightly of such sacrifices. "So many killed,"--with that brief
sentence we glide over the unimaginably fearful fact, and pass on to
other details. We indulge in pious commonplaces,--"They have gone to a
better world, they have their reward," and the like. No doubt this is
true; if not, then life is a mockery, and hope a lie. But the future,
with all our faith, is vague and uncertain. It lies before us like one
of those unidentified heroes, hidden from sight, deep-buried,
mysterious, its headstone lettered "Unknown." Will it ever rise? Through
trouble, toils, and privations,--not insensible to danger, but braving
it,--these men--and not these only, but the uncounted thousands
represented by these--confronted, for their country's sake, that awful
uncertainty. Did they believe in your better world? Whether they did or
not, this world was a reality, and dear to them.

I looked into one of the trenches in which workmen were laying
foundations for the headstones, and saw the ends of the coffins
protruding. It was silent and dark down there. Side by side the soldiers
slept, as side by side they fought. I chose out one coffin from among
the rest, and thought of him whose dust it contained,--your brother and
mine, although we never knew him. I thought of him as a child, tenderly
reared--for this. I thought of his home, his heart-life:--

"Had he a father?
Had he a mother?
Had he a sister?
Had he a brother?
Or was there a nearer one
Still, and a dearer one
Yet, than all other?"

I could not know: in this world, none will ever know. He sleeps with the
undistinguishable multitude, and his headstone is lettered, "Unknown."

Eighteen loyal States are represented by the tenants of these graves.
New York has the greatest number,--upwards of eight hundred;
Pennsylvania comes next in order, having upwards of five hundred. Tall
men from Maine, young braves from Wisconsin, heroes from every state
between, met here to defend their country and their homes. Sons of
Massachusetts fought for Massachusetts on Pennsylvania soil. If they had
not fought, or if our armies had been annihilated there, the whole North
would have been at the mercy of Lee's victorious legions. As Cemetery
Hill was the pivot on which turned the fortunes of the battle, so
Gettysburg itself was the pivot on which turned the destiny of the
nation. Here the power of aggressive treason culminated; and from that
memorable Fourth of July when the Rebel invaders, beaten in the three
days' previous fight, stole away down the valleys and behind the
mountains on their ignominious retreat,--from that day, signalized also
by the fall of Vicksburg in the West, it waned and waned, until it was
swept from the earth.

Cemetery Hill should be the first visited by the tourist of the
battle-ground. Here a view of the entire field, and a clear
understanding of the military operations of the three days, are best
obtained. Looking north, away on your left lies Seminary Ridge, the
scene of the first day's fight, in which the gallant Reynolds fell, and
from which our troops were driven back in confusion through the town by
overwhelming numbers, in the afternoon. Farther south spread the
beautiful woods and vales that swarmed with Rebels on the second and
third day, and from which they made such desperate charges upon our
lines. On the right as you stand is Culp's Hill, the scene of Ewell's
furious, but futile, attempts to flank us there. You are in the focus of
a half-circle, from all points of which was poured in upon this now
silent hill such an artillery fire as has seldom been concentrated upon
one point of an open field in any of the great battles upon this planet.
From this spot extend your observations as you please.

Guided by the sturdy old man, I proceeded first to Culp's Hill,
following a line of breastworks into the woods. Here are seen some of
the soldiers' devices hastily adopted for defence. A rude embankment of
stakes and logs and stones, covered with earth, forms the principal
work; aside from which you meet with little private breastworks, as it
were, consisting of rocks heaped up by the trunk of a tree, or beside a
larger rock, or across a cleft in the rocks, where some sharpshooter
stood and exercised his skill at his ease.

The woods are of oak chiefly, but with a liberal sprinkling of chestnut,
black-walnut, hickory, and other common forest-trees. Very beautiful
they were that day, with their great, silent trunks, all so friendly,
their clear vistas and sun-spotted spaces. Beneath reposed huge, sleepy
ledges and boulders, their broad backs covered with lichens and old
moss. A more fitting spot for a picnic, one would say, than for a
battle.

Yet here remain more astonishing evidences of fierce fighting than
anywhere else about Gettysburg. The trees in certain localities are all
seamed, disfigured, and literally dying or dead from their wounds. The
marks of balls in some of the trunks are countless. Here are limbs, and
yonder are whole tree-tops, cut off by shells. Many of these trees have
been hacked for lead, and chips containing bullets have been carried
away for relics.

Past the foot of the hill runs Rock Creek, a muddy, sluggish stream,
"great for eels," said John Burns. Big boulders and blocks of stone lie
scattered along its bed. Its low shores are covered with thin grass,
shaded by the forest-trees. Plenty of Rebel knapsacks and haversacks lie
rotting upon the ground; and there are Rebel graves in the woods near
by. By these I was inclined to pause longer than John Burns thought it
worth the while. I felt a pity for these unhappy men which he could not
understand. To him they were dead Rebels, and nothing more; and he spoke
with great disgust of an effort which had been made by certain
"Copperheads" of the town to have all the buried Rebels, now scattered
about in the woods and fields, gathered together in a cemetery near that
dedicated to our own dead.

"Yet consider, my friend," I said, "though they were altogether in the
wrong, and their cause was infernal, these, too, were brave men; and
under different circumstances, with no better hearts than they had, they
might have been lying in honored graves up yonder, instead of being
buried in heaps, like dead cattle, down here."

Is there not a better future for these men also? The time will come when
we shall at least cease to hate them.

The cicada was singing, insects were humming in the air, crows were
cawing in the tree-tops, the sunshine slept on the boughs or nestled in
the beds of brown leaves on the ground,--all so pleasant and so pensive,
I could have passed the day there. But John reminded me that night was
approaching, and we returned to Gettysburg.

That evening I walked alone to Cemetery Hill to see the sun set behind
the Blue Ridge. A quiet prevailed there still more profound than during
the day. The stonecutters had finished their day's work and gone home.
The katydids were singing, and the shrill, sad chirp of the crickets
welcomed the cool shades. The sun went down, and the stars came out and
shone upon the graves,--the same stars which were no doubt shining even
then upon many a vacant home and mourning heart left lonely by the
husbands, the fathers, the dear brothers and sons, who fell at
Gettysburg.

The next morning, according to agreement, I went to call on the old
hero. I found him living in the upper part of a little whitewashed
two-story house, on the corner of two streets, west of the town. A
flight of wooden steps outside took me to his door. He was there to
welcome me. John Burns is a stoutish, slightly bent, hale old man, with
a light blue eye, a long, aggressive nose, a firm-set mouth, expressive
of determination of character, and a choleric temperament. His hair,
originally dark brown, is considerably bleached with age; and his beard,
once sandy, covers his face (shaved once or twice a week) with a fine
crop of silver stubble. A short, massy kind of man; about five feet four
or five inches in height, I should judge. He was never measured but once
in his life. That was when he enlisted in the War of 1812. He was then
nineteen years old, and stood five feet in his shoes. "But I've growed a
heap since," said the old hero.

He introduced me to his wife, a slow, somewhat melancholy old lady, in
ill health. "She has been poorly now for a good many years." They have
no children.

At my request he told me his story. He is of Scotch parentage; and who
knows but he may be akin to the ploughman-poet whose "arrowy songs still
sing in our morning air"? He was born and bred in Burlington, New
Jersey. A shoemaker by trade, he became a soldier by choice, and fought
the British in what used to be the "last war." I am afraid he contracted
bad habits in the army. For some years after the war he led a wandering
and dissipated life. Forty years ago he chanced to find himself in
Gettysburg, where he married and settled down. But his unfortunate
habits still adhered to him, and he was long looked upon as a man of
little worth. At last, however, when there seemed to be no hope of his
ever being anything but a despised old man, he took a sudden resolution
to reform. The fact that he kept that resolution, and still keeps it so
strictly that it is impossible to prevail upon him to taste a drop of
intoxicating liquor, attests a truly heroic will. He was afterwards a
constable in Gettysburg, in which capacity he served some six years.

On the morning of the first day's fight he sent his wife away, telling
her that he would take care of the house. The firing was near by, over
Seminary Ridge. Soon a wounded soldier came into the town and stopped at
an old house on the opposite corner. Burns saw the poor fellow lay down
his musket, and the inspiration to go into the battle seems then first
to have seized him. He went over and demanded the gun.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked the soldier.

"I'm going to shoot some of the damned Rebels!" replied John.

He is not a swearing man, and the strong adjective is to be taken in a
strictly literal, not a profane, sense.

Having obtained the gun, he pushed out on the Chambersburg Pike, and was
soon in the thick of the skirmish.

"I wore a high-crowned hat, and a long-tailed blue; and I was seventy
years old."

The sight of so old a man, in such costume, rushing fearlessly forward
to get a shot in the very front of the battle, of course attracted
attention. He fought with the Seventh Wisconsin Regiment, the Colonel of
which ordered him back, and questioned him, and finally, seeing the old
man's patriotic determination, gave him a good rifle in place of the
musket he had brought with him.

"Are you a good shot?"

"Tolerable good," said John, who is an old fox-hunter.

"Do you see that Rebel riding yonder?"

"I do."

"Can you fetch him?"

"I can try."

The old man took deliberate aim and fired. He does not say he killed the
Rebel, but simply that his shot was cheered by the Wisconsin boys, and
that afterwards the horse the Rebel rode was seen galloping with an
empty saddle. "That's all I know about it."

He fought until our forces were driven back in the afternoon. He had
already received two slight wounds, and a third one through the arm, to
which he paid little attention: "only the blood running down my hand
bothered me a heap." Then, as he was slowly falling back with the rest,
he received a final shot through the leg. "Down I went, and the whole
Rebel army ran over me." Helpless, nearly bleeding to death from his
wounds, he lay upon the field all night. "About sun-up, next morning, I
crawled to a neighbor's house, and found it full of wounded Rebels." The
neighbor afterwards took him to his own house, which had also been
turned into a Rebel hospital. A Rebel surgeon dressed his wounds; and he
says he received decent treatment at the hands of the enemy, until a
Copperhead woman living opposite "told on him."

"That's the old man who said he was going out to shoot some of the
damned Rebels!"

Some officers came and questioned him, endeavoring to convict him of
"bushwhacking"; but the old man gave them little satisfaction. This was
on Friday, the third day of the battle; and he was alone with his wife
in the upper part of the house. The Rebels left, and soon after two
shots were fired. One bullet entered the window, passed over Burns's
head, and struck the wall behind the lounge on which he was lying. The
other shot fell lower, passing through a door. Burns is certain that the
design was to assassinate him. That the shots were fired by the Rebels
there can be no doubt; and as they were fired from their own side,
towards the town, of which they held possession at the time, John's
theory was plainly the true one. The hole in the window, and the
bullet-marks in the door and wall remain.

Burns went with me over the ground where the first day's fight took
place. He showed me the scene of his hot day's work,--pointed out two
trees, behind which he and one of the Wisconsin boys stood and "picked
off every Rebel that showed his head," and the spot where he fell and
lay all night under the stars and dew.

This act of daring on the part of so aged a citizen, and his subsequent
sufferings from wounds, naturally called out a great deal of sympathy,
and caused him to be looked upon as a hero. But a hero, like a prophet,
has not all honor in his own country. There's a wide-spread, violent
prejudice against Burns among that class of the townspeople termed
"Copperheads." The young men, especially, who did _not_ take their guns
and go into the fight as this old man did, but who ran, when running was
possible, in the opposite direction, dislike Burns. Some aver that he
did not have a gun in his hand that day, and that he was wounded by
accident, happening to get between the two lines. Others admit the fact
of his carrying a gun into the fight, but tell you, with a sardonic
smile, that his "motives were questionable." Some, who are eager enough
to make money on his picture, sold against his will, and without profit
to him, will tell you in confidence, after you have purchased it, that
"Burns is a perfect humbug."

After studying the old man's character, conversing both with his friends
and enemies, and sifting evidence, during four days spent in Gettysburg,
I formed my conclusions. Of his going into the fight, and _fighting_,
there is no doubt whatever. Of his bravery, amounting even to rashness,
there can be no reasonable question. He is a patriot of the most zealous
sort; a hot, impulsive man, who meant what he said, when he started with
the gun to go and shoot some of the Rebels qualified with the strong
adjective. A thoroughly honest man, too, I think; although some of his
remarks are to be taken with considerable allowance. His temper causes
him to form immoderate opinions and to make strong statements. "_He
always goes beyant_," said my landlord, a firm friend of his, speaking
of this tendency to overstep the bounds of calm judgment.

Burns is a sagacious observer of men and things, and makes occasionally
such shrewd remarks as this:--

"Whenever you see the marks of shells and bullets on a house all covered
up, and painted and plastered over, that's the house of a Rebel
sympathizer; but when you see them all preserved and kept in sight, as
something to be proud of, that's the house of a true Union man."

Well, whatever is said or thought of the old hero, he is _what he is_,
and has satisfaction in that, and not in other people's opinions; for so
it must finally be with all. _Character_ is the one thing valuable.
_Reputation_, which is a mere shadow of the man, what his character is
_reputed_ to be, is, in the long run, of infinitely less importance.

I am happy to add that the old man has been awarded a pension.

The next day I mounted a hard-trotting horse and rode to Round Top. On
the way I stopped at the historical peach-orchard, known as Sherfy's,
where Sickles's Corps was repulsed, after a terrific conflict, on
Thursday, the second day of the battle. The peaches were green on the
trees then; but they were ripe now, and the trees were breaking down
with them. One of Mr. Sherfy's girls--the youngest, she told me--was in
the orchard. She had in her basket rareripes to sell. They were large
and juicy and sweet,--all the redder, no doubt, for the blood of the
brave that had drenched the sod. So calm and impassive is Nature,
silently turning all things to use! The carcass of a mule, or the
godlike shape of a warrior cut down in the hour of glory,--she knows no
difference between them, but straightway proceeds to convert both alike
into new forms of life and beauty.

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